Last week we reported on Steven Spielberg’s plans to direct an adaptation of the cult sci-fi novel by Ernest Cline, Ready Player One. Color us excited. The novel involves players of a video game journeying into a virtual reality world rife with pop culture references and Easter eggs to the real world. The player who can decipher all the mysteries and references in the world wins the opportunity to control it. In Spielberg’s capable hands, it has the potential to be a technical marvel and a modern classic.

That is, if he actually makes it. Ready Player One poses some unusually problematic challenges on just a practical standpoint. Cline’s story falls into the “unfilmable novel” territory, not just for the digital world necessary for a filmmaker to recreate, but also in terms of licensing. To get the rights to depict the many iconic film and TV characters
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Exclusive: Former TF1 sales exec joins London outfit as home ent exec.

Former TF1 International and Funny Balloons sales executive Marta Ravani-Lorber has joined Protagonist Pictures as director of video, digital and TV sales, effective immediately.

Based at Protagonist’s London headquarters, Ravani-Lorber’s remit will include sales to all platforms of the Film4 Library, which Protagonist has handled since 2008, and its own back catalogue of more than 50 titles.

Ravani-Lorber previously worked across sales, production and acquisitions, most recently as international sales manager for TF1 International in Paris and before that as sales acquisitions manager with Funny Balloons.

The next couple years are going to be very busy for Matt Damon. In addition to the return of Jason Bourne in a new film directed by Paul Greengrass, he's working on The Martian for release this year, and is set to star in Downsizing with director Alexander Payne. In addition, he's also got The Great Wall at Legendary Pictures from director Zhang Yimou, and the action adventure has just gained a new cast member. THR reports Willem Dafoe has joined the film which features a fantastical retelling of the origin of The Great Wall of China. However, details on Dafoe's character are being kept under wraps for the now. More below!
But the good news is we actually have some plot details as the trade reports Damon is playing a soldier in a group of mercenaries traveling to China in order to bring back gunpowder to Europe. But when
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Over the past decade, the BAFTAs have become an increasingly accurate barometer for the eventual Oscar winners, with the last six Best Picture winners in a row being pre-empted by an identical BAFTA winner.

But there have been several memorable – and telling – instances in which the two awards bodies have diverged, and often not for the obvious cultural reasons you expect.

It's easy enough to see, for example, why Four Weddings and a Funeral took the top prize at 1995's BAFTAs while Forrest Gump triumphed across the pond, and ditto The Full Monty over Titanic three years later. But the explanation isn't always so clear, and the discrepancy often highlights intriguing differences between Academy and BAFTA members' sensibilities.

Digital Spy looks back on six notable times BAFTA diverged from the Academy path, either for better or for worse.

“The lesson we take away is don’t suck — make great movies,” he said with a laugh during a recent lunch.

FilmNation is coming into the Berlin Film Festival with considerable momentum from 2014 as one of the key backers of adult-skewing movies at a time when studios continue to focus their resources on franchises and $200 million tentpoles. Its sweet spot is in the $12 million to $30 million budget range.

The company hit three milestones last year: It helped develop and sell “The Imitation Game” which has more than $100 million in worldwide grosses; during Cannes, it announced the Amy Adams-starring, $50 million alien-arrival project “Story of Your Life,” produced with Lava Bear for which Paramount paid $20 million for North American rights; and finalized a strategic parnership with Roadshow Australia under
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Prolific filmmaker Frank Marshall has been selected by the Board of Directors of the American Cinema Editors (Ace) to be honored with the organization’s prestigious Ace Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year Award. The award will be presented at the 65thAnnual Ace Eddie Awards black-tie ceremony on Friday, January 30, 2015 in the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

Michael Mann’s new film, Blackhat, is a paradox of magnitudes and proximities. The scale is global, as announced in the opening shots that rhyme with the Universal logo just prior and, thanks to the dissolves down to Earth, Charles and Ray Eames﻿' 1977 Powers of Ten. Once on ground, in a nuclear reactor’s control room, the powers of cinema take us yet deeper, smaller, to see how fast data travels across minuscule relays inside a screen, a computer, a network. And this data, or code, is made visible as points of light—dots arrayed and racing in tandem with the image (itself a fiction of code, or data) of this new vast universe—given weight through the thunder and crackle of sound design—a truly cinematic sequence of movement/animation no text can replicate.

“Frank Marshall has helped shape American film, treating audiences to some of the most well-loved, successful and enduring films in cinematic history,” says the board of Ace, an honorary society of film editors. He “has made – and continues to make – a profound and indelible contribution to the cinematic landscape.”

Paris — Variety caught up with Nicolas Saada, a former French film journo at the prestigious mag Les Cahiers du Cinema and a screenwriter who made his directorial debut with “Spy (es).” For his sophomore outing, Saada is tackling the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack with “Taj Mahal,” a psychological thriller toplining “Nymphomaniac” star Stacy Martin as a young woman who was trapped in one of the suites of the hotel during the assault. Sold by Bac Films and produced by Patrick Sobelman at Agat Films, the $8 million film is based on the true story of one of the survivors, taking place over one night inside Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, which was seized by terrorists who took guests hostage.

Variety: What made you want to make a film about this terrorist attack in Mumbai?

When I was promoting “Spy (ies),” I lived the Mumbai attack minute by minute. And it happened
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Tuesday’s DGA nominations are good news for Morten Tyldum, not so good for Ava DuVernay and David Fincher — though the exclusions don’t mean they don’t still have Oscar nomination possibilities.

With only five slots, some deserving folks didn’t make the cut. However, they shouldn’t give up hope: The nominees for the Directors Guild of America and Oscar have been identical only five times since 1970.

The Directors Guild of America have spoken and raised the Eastwood flag yet again. The 84 year old director cruised to a nomination for his conservative military drama American Sniper. It's his fourth nomination with the DGA. He has won twice before at the DGA and also received a Lifetime Achievement Award. The Academy has nominated him even more often for directing as American Sniper will be his fifth Best Director nomination should it come to pass. Eastwood has a habit of crashing the party late. He did it in 2004 with Million Dollar Baby when everyone was preparing for an Aviator sweep. He did it in 2006 with the tiny grossing nearly black and white foreign language film Letters from Iwo Jima and he looks like he'll do it again on Thursday for American Sniper.

Tomorrow, the Directors Guild of America will announce their nominations for their 67th annual awards, so let’s take a look at whose names we’ll most likely be seeing in those five coveted slots for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures.

Damon is returning to the thriller series having played CIA assassin Bourne in the first three movies, while Jeremy Renner starred as Cross in The Bourne Legacy.

Marshall told Collider when asked about a potential crossover: "We don't have plans for that. You never know. I never say never. But that's not the plan. They're on separate tracks.

"It was really the challenge of finding the story. If you look back five or six years ago, when we were maybe going on, we just didn't have a story. It's taken this long for us to come up with a story that everybody responded to."

Marshall appears to have changed his opinion, having previously stated in the lead-up to The Bourne Legacy's release: "You see there are several different [special ops] programmes
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Ever since it was revealed that Matt Damon was returning to the Jason Bourne franchise with director Paul Greengrass behind the camera again, fans were already hoping that there would be some kind of cross over with The Bourne Legacy franchise that Jeremy Renner stepped into in 2012. However, if producer Frank Marshall is to be believed, that may not happen at all. Though Marshall once said that Damon and Renner may be able to team up sometime down the road, a conversation with Collider indicated a complete 180 on that prospect happening as the producer says, "We don’t have plans for that." Read on!
Of course, Marshall doesn't close the door entirely as he continues, "You never know. I never say never. But that’s not the plan. They’re on separate tracks." In a way that makes sense, but since both Aaron Cross and Jason Bourne have turned on
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"You see there are several different programmes in the movie with different skill sets. All possibilities are open. My dream is that in the next one we see Matt and Jeremy team up," producer Frank Marshall said, with a possible twinkle in his eye, in the lead up to the release of "The Bourne Legacy." That attempted spinoff was a disappointment both financially and creatively, and it left Universal, at least for a moment, with a franchise in trouble. Plans were still moving along for another installment starring Jeremy Renner, but then a miracle happened: Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass finally agreed to return for another 'Bourne' adventure, Renner's movie was postponed, and now it looks like Aaron Cross will be a distant memory for now.
Chatting with Collider, Marshall has now switched gears entirely, and it looks like it's a Bourne-only world after all, at least as far as movies are concerned.
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Producer Frank Marshall is out doing press this week at the TCA Winter Press Tour and has spoken about both the next film in the Jason Bourne franchise, as well as the long-gestating sequel to the beloved family adventure film "The Goonies".

Collider spoke with Marshall and asked if there is any plans for Renner's Cross to crossover with Damon's Bourne. Marshall says: "We don't have plans for that. You never know. I never say never. But that's not the plan. They're on separate tracks."

Marshall says the main reason Damon and Greengrass are returning is that they now have a story everyone is keen to do: "It was
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During the TCA winter press tour, executive producer Frank Marshall was on hand to present the new documentary Sinatra: All or Nothing at All which will revolve around the life of the famous entertainer and which will be broadcast on HBO. Aside from the documentary, Marshall talked to Collider about how Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon are reuniting in a new Bourne film and that there are no plans for this film to crossover with the upcoming one featuring Jeremy Renner. He also discussed the possibility of a new Indiana Jones film (there is no plan in place) and a Goonies sequel.

Read his comments below:

How big of a challenge was it to get Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass back together, since it sounded like that wouldn’t happen again?Marshall: It was really the challenge of finding the story. If you look back five or six years ago,
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